Chris Yaw

Putting stuff before people, we do it all the time!

And not just money and possessions, but political opinions, ethnic pride, and financial status. It can divide us, and keeps us from connecting like we should, with the people we should, to follow the example we should!

Spy Wednesday, Holy Week's Hump Day, points to Judas and you and me and the ways we make regretful decisions that sacrifice relationships, which are the greatest well of happiness humans have!

Holy Wednesday invites you and me to take the high road, like Jesus, and to let God get mad, let God get even. Amidst that betrayal, Jesus still loved Judas, he put the relationship above all else, because when we love our neighbor, especially our enemy, we love God.

How will we love our enemies today, like Jesus?

Our best life often comes after a lot of little deaths...

When we have found a way to put to death our selfishness, gluttony, laziness, apathy, lack of belief in ourselves, we often discover what remains:

It's who we are at our essence, the God-breathed image of God, alive to peace, joy, harmony, courage, and hope.

Yet for these to emerge, we must actively put to death their opponents.

When Jesus talked about a seed falling to the ground, to its death, in order for abundant new life to emerge, we can take this as a challenge to confront the negative forces that keep us down, knowing that when these are vanquished, newness and new life emerge!

What does this look like for you?

Don't be afraid of death! In the midst, is your new life!

What makes you mad?

For Jesus, it was injustice - seeing hypocrisy, greed, and selfishness playing out - as religious people built walls of separation between God and God's people - denying them of what we all yearn for - wholeness, abundance, peace, and connection with their creator.

Did you notice that Jesus didn't sit around.

He staged a dramatic protest.

He made it known that he was not going to stand by idly in the face of injustice.

And in so doing, he teaches you and me how to channel our own voices of protest.

You and I were not created to sit idly by as our hearts get similarly pierced by the injustices all around us!

What's making your blood boil?

What's got your Godly anger piqued?

Did God give you that emotion so you could suppress it?

No!

To carry on Jesus work means to engage in our own dramatic protest - we see injustice around us!

Where do you see it?

As God led Jesus to champion the rights of the oppressed, how are we being similarly led?

Are you believing God today?

The patriarch of the major Abrahamic faiths, Abraham, was famous for doing that, for having faith.

But not just any faith, a belief that was honed over years of success, like having a child at an old age, but also through missteps, like denying his marriage and taking sleeping with the maid.

But while Abraham certainly shows us faithfulness, much more he shows us God's faithfulness! - how God continued to believe in Abraham - despite the cringe-worthy mistakes!

That same God believes in you - despite the mistakes and mishaps you have made, you and I are challenged to believe in the journey! To believe that as we, too, hone or beliefs in God, God is doing wonders through us as well.

So forgive yourself, look to God for strength, your own faithfulness comes from God's faithfulness!

See you Sunday!

It's one of the clearest statements in the Bible, the prophet Micah asks, 'What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice...'

Maybe you wonder why the richest society ever, allows one in 8 people to live in poverty; Why the top 1% richest people pay a lower percentage of their wealth in taxes than the rest of us; or why women still make less than 80 cents in the dollar compared to men?

God did not make you feel uncomfortable, to annoy you, but to inspire you!

Don't ignore the inequalities that bother you! But dig down and see why they are there! Find a way to constructively channel your emotions.

This Sunday we will hear about the start of Jesus' ministry - in which he rooted himself in prayer then said, 'Let's go...'

Let's go! is still our rallying cry. There are all kinds of groups working for all kinds of crucial societal change, that need our attention! Fight the temptation to disengage and ignore, and rationalize.

You were put here to make positive change in the world.

Of course, God's call is usually messy, uncomfortable, inconvenient, costly, maybe even dangerous.

But this is why you are so smart,
This is why you are so rich,
This is why you have the relationships you do
What does s the Lord require of you? To do justice.

Conversations over politics ever separated you from anybody?

Happens too often, doesn't it? And among religious people, who may be forgetting how Christ came to unite the world in love, not divide it in fear.

We love when we seek common ground, living into our ministry of reconciliation, 2 cor 5.

We divide when we amplify difference.

Winning arguments, then, having it our way, insisting on not compromising is an idol when we choose being right over being in relationship!

'Im not talking with that person, they voted this way!' is not an option.

The Apostle Paul got it.

This weekend we'll hear him say, if my eating meat offends my neighbor I'll skip the meat and keep the neighbor.

Following Jesus means putting others first not just when we agree, but especially when we disagree.

Look for common ground.

Seek compromise.

Putting others first, as Christ did with us, is the essence of the gospel, let us go out and do likewise.

I was chatting with the brawny and buff clerk at a car rental desk once who was tossing a football up and down.

I asked him what was up - he said he had just had tryouts with 3 NFL teams and was waiting for his agent to call - and let him know if a lucrative contract was on offer - that at any moment he might leave his job as a clerk to become a pro football millionaire.

I wonder, when Jesus called his fishermen disciples, who immediately dropped everything to follow him, if something similar was going on -

Might this have been something they had been preparing and hoping for in the same way - perhaps they had dreams of trading their lives for something much, much bigger.

This, of course, may be what's in store for you: are you seeing it, preparing for it, ready for it? Start preparing not just for who and where you are, but who and where you - and God - might want you to be?

God did not give you that dream, vision, goal, or purpose for nothing - keep that hope burning! Prepare, be ready, hope - that call is coming.

One of the best things we can do today is look for love in other people!

That's who we are at our core, love, although we occlude it in a myriad of ways, thanks to our fears, insecurities, and basic needs for affirmation, acceptance, and admiration.

But deep down, we were made by love in order to love.

It is this season of epiphany, or revealing, we look for the ways Love is being revealed around us.

And so, on Sunday we will meet this character named Nathaniel: and we see that Jesus is made known by making Nathaniel feel known.

Today you will interact with people who are just dying to be known, to have you pay attention to them, care about them, endeavor to find the love in them.

And that's why we are here! To find God, to find love in all People, in all things! Happy hunting!

The old understanding of epiphany was seeing a star, and radically changing everything! Waking up smelling like booze and quitting cold turkey! Meeting the man of your dreams and flushing your cigarettes down the toilet forever.

As dramatic as this is, it rarely works. Don't change your habit, first change your identity!

As unforgettable as it was for the bishop to lay his hands on me did not convince me I was a priest, This did not change my identity. What makes me a priest is my daily prayer, Bible study, and determination to follow Christ and make the world better

In other words, identify as a skinny person, asking what would a skinny person eat? And your exercise and nutrition habits will change.

That's epiphany 2.0! Start embodying the kind of person you want to be, forming those habits, taking those actions, speaking that vocabulary, hanging out with those kind of people, and this is how you live into that person who you want to be, and, indeed, perhaps whom God is calling you to be.

I love you!

These are the three most important and underused words in the English language.

They are God's most generously lavished upon words to us, and our most guarded words to others.

And when we think about it, we realize that it's because we never really think about it.

It's a holiday week! We have time to contemplate gifts and giftgivers. Let's also think about not only the people we love, but telling them that we love them.

We noticed that God is not stingy with love, So we don't need to be either!

When you tell someone you love them, don't be surprised if they reciprocate!

Go tell it from the mountain means being that instigator and initiator, that self-starter, that entrepreneur, that go-getter! This is one of the best gifts of Christmas!

I love you!

How happy you are when you put your head to the pillow at night, is often determined by how good to others you were throughout the day.

Our day is filled with temptations to fulfill personal ambitions, acquire possessions, power, popularity - and pushing those things aside to make room for caring and connecting with others is the challenge we all face.

At your core is unconditional love.

The more deeply you connect with that, the more deeply you connect with others, they're concerns, their worries, their problems, so that shouldering the burden with the overburdened becomes something we are not only equipped to do, but something that offers great reward.

Helping others will help you!

It's a secret of a happy life

It's the secret of Christmas.

Doing good to others is good for you.

What is imperfect in your life?

Relationships? Finances? The direction of our country? Or the injustice of guns donated at a buyback that don't get destroyed but get recycled?

In what may be the most preposterous sounding advice in the Bible, Saint Paul says our posture ought to be to rejoice.

Not to rejoice for all things, but to rejoice in all things.

In other words, if you're not happy now, when are you going to be happy?

The upcoming third Sunday of Advent, when we light one more candle on the wreath, reminds us that the light is coming, hope is with us, no matter what it is we are facing, we don't face it alone, but we face it with one who promises our final destiny is not despair.

Imperfection surrounds us and finding a way to be happy in the midst, is our challenge and our possibility.

Chris Yaw

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